Wondering if the bottle of wine I have is still good or not?

Question

During my move to a new place, I found a bottle of wine that I had kept in my refrigerator that was dated 2004. It was still sealed, didnt' look like anything was floating around inside, and for all intensive purposes looked to be an average bottle of red wine that you'd find at your typical liquor store. However I'm wondering if it's still any good or not, and if there was a way to check outside of opening it and taking a swig.

Answer

That's the thing about wine. You never know until you taste it. It might be a pleasant surprise or it might be swill. That's actually part of the fun of trying wine.

But generally speaking, if it was nothing special 2004 it won't be better now. Wines that are worth "waiting for" are noticeably outstanding even when they're new (they might need more decanting early in their life).

Just try it... but have a back-up bottle!

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